Of course, not everything that wealthy New Yorkers spend money on is cheaper here. Housing, after all, is absurdly expensive, even for the rich. Complex zoning regulations and limited land make it all but impossible for supply to grow alongside demand. … What’s happening in New York is just part of a national shift. Highly paid, college-educated people are increasingly clustering in the college-graduate-dense, high-amenity cities where they get good deals on the stuff they like, while low-skilled people are increasingly flowing out to cheaper places with a worse quality of life.

Why, it’s almost as though cities are engaged in … exclusionary zoning.